Gaming & Culture —

Notch explains why you can’t find Minecraft on Steam

Minecraft has sold something on the order of fifty hojillion copies, making its creator, Markus "Notch" Persson, a hero among indie developers. There is an oddity about this success, however: Minecraft is still not available to purchase via Steam. After being asked the reasons for this at PAX, Persson decided to make a public statement on his blog.

He begins the post with effusive praise for the digital-delivery platform, before explaining why he doesn't sell his own game there. "Being on Steam limits a lot of what we're allowed to do with the game, and how we're allowed to talk to our users," Persson wrote. "We (probably?) wouldn't be able to, say, sell capes or have a map market place on minecraft.net that works with steam customers in a way that keeps Valve happy. It would effectively split the Minecraft community into two parts, where only some of the players can access all of the weird content we want to add to the game."

This is reminiscent of EA's reasons for not offering Battlefield 3 on Steam. "When a download service forbids publishers from contacting players with patches, new levels, items and other services—it disrupts our ability to provide the ongoing support players expect from us," EA said in a statement. "At present, this is the case with only one download service. While EA offers its entire portfolio to this site, they have elected to not post many of our games."

In the case of Minecraft, there's no big argument or disagreement between himself and Valve, and Persson stated that he's speaking with the company about these issues. He simply noted that "a certain inherent incompatibility between what we want to do and what they want to do."